New winners all around at ’09 Talent Showdown!

Teen Times crowned new winners as the best rapper, singer and dancers at the annual Talent Showdown Saturday night.

Jernaldo “Dr. Rum” Thielman, Andrew Sylvester and H.O.T. dancers were named the top performers for 2009 at the most-anticipated talent show each year. Veteran performers have moved on, but the new talent “showed that it’s their time to shine,” Teen Times said Sunday. Winners at Talent Showdown are headed to Tallahassee, Florida, next year.

Thielman won with his positive “Yes I Can” rap, featuring Samantha Theodore’s backing vocals and several young children wearing shirts with the song title. His rap urged young people to “change your attitude and change your mind” and “drop the rags and forget about colors” – referring to gang distinctions. I worked so hard on this, it’s a great feeling,” Thielman said.

Judges gave Thielman, last year’s second place winner in rap, 443 points. H.O.T rappers finished second with 400 points and Platinum Boyz finished third with 378 points.

Sylvester is no stranger to the talent showdown stage. The young man had performed four other times without victory, but on Saturday, with a rendition of John Legend’s “Ordinary People,” he won. With 418 points and a calm, confident stage presence, Sylvester bested Tatiana Gibs (404) singing “This is My Now” by Jordin Sparks and Anique “Royalty” Hughes (359) singing “Halo” by Beyonce.

“Now I can retire,” Sylvester joked with Teen Times.

H.O.T. dancers won their first talent showdown this year with 423 points. H.O.T. has in the past 14 months won St. Maarten Top Talent Dance Crew, and two Rock the House championships.

Second place winners “The Difference” – a trio of young girls representing Clara Reyes’ Imbali School for Creative Movement and Dance – gave them “stiff competition,” Teen Times said. Shantal Richardson, Shamilla Leonard and Carmen Korstanje wowed the crowd and judges with their high energy performance and level of difficulty of their dance moves. In under three minutes, they impressed with a high-energy, technically sound performance that got them 407 points.

St. Maarten Academy’s Eccentrik placed third with 406 points. Eccentrik mixed a wide variety of music genres and dance styles in its routine.

The show went well, and Coordinator Mike Granger said he couldn’t be more proud of all of the young performers, not only the winners. “Many of the young people who have been performing over the years are now at college,” Granger said in a press statement. “What we saw tonight was the emergence of new talent; Young people who we hope will be the next generation of winners for years to come.”

“We continue to strive to give our youth the opportunity to build self-confidence, to instil in them the power of discipline and commitment to what they do and urge them to realize that clean, positive fun and activities only adds to their overall development as young people. We are very proud of all of them,” he added.

The winners of Talent Showdown 2009 will next form part of a delegation to travel to Tallahassee in February 2010. According to Granger, the trip will be an educational one that will feature tours of the various colleges with which St. Maarten has a relationship.

“The trip is being facilitated by the St. Maarten-Tallahassee Foundation and seeks to expand on the possibilities of the Sister City Agreement between St. Maarten and Florida’s capitol city,” Teen Times said.

Police, ambulance and Teen Times’ contracted security force Cuffs Security Services, reported an incident free and smooth event and praised Teen Times for once again hosting a quality event. Granger took pride in noting that in the eight years of Talent Showdown, the event has gone incident free. “That’s a testament to our strict rules and guidelines, organization and quality of our family oriented show,” he said.

He went on to make special mention of Commissioners William Marlin, Theo Heyliger, and Frans Richardson, UTS Chipster, Caribbean Liquours and Tobacco, MGC & Associates, Motorworld and the crew of Rent-A-Sound. Without these persons and companies he said, Talent Showdown 2009 would never have happened.

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